My library is 162,69 GB which is 67 days according to iTunes.
Considering there are 1440 minutes in a day that would mean I have 96 480 minutes of music.
That is roughly 24 000 minutes less then what Apple's literature advertises yet it still wouldn't fit on a 160 GB iPod.

Apple advertises 40 000 songs but mentions 20 000 songs in the fine prints at 4 minutes each that is 160 000 and 80 minutes respectively.

If we go with the advertised number of 40 000 songs or 160 000 minutes that would mean 1000 minutes of music per GB or 250 songs per GB.

I hope this answers your question.

__________________
If you are a MacRumors newbie, chances are I will disregard your post.

The limiting factor in this case is not the size of the files, or the total number of minutes. The limiting factor is the number of songs that can be recognized by the iPod's .itl song database engine, which is ~32,767 (16-bit signed integer). Note: The iTunes application on the host computer does not have this hard limit-- only the iPod.

A couple of years ago, I participated in a thread where the OP was an experimental musician and had recorded tens of thousands of tiny tracks no longer than 10 seconds each. He was wanting to sync them all and have the iPod play them on shuffle to come up with a sort of random soundscape. Unfortunately, he found that he couldn't fit them all on the iPod, even though the total filesize was way smaller than the iPod's capacity. It was later discovered that the iPod's shuffle function uses a 16-bit signed integer to randomize the track listing; thus, Apple programmed in a hard limit for the total number of tracks the iPod could hold so as not to cause the iPod to crash when shuffling.

This means I could theoretically fill up your 160GB iPod with 70068 songs, at 284618 minutes (however I'm intrigued if the limit really is ~32,000 songs as the post above mentioned due to a software limitation).

If I instead used the FLAC lossless originals that I rip from, I wouldn't even be able to fit my current library of 6446 songs onto your iPod, even though that's only 26208 minutes of song (because the lossless versions are 167 GB).

This is irrelevant it depends on the size of each file. In iTunes you'll be able to find the size of your library.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfisher3

Please do not respond to this thread with snarky remarks that bring nothing to this discussion.

Snarky? That reply was 100% correct. What are you going on about?

It doesn't matter about the amt of minutes, the number of songs or anything else. The only variable that matters is the amt of data.

Those "Apple" estimates are merely that....estimates based on encoding rates of certain amt of files of a certain length that would correspond to the capacity.All of which are variables that are not uniform in anyone's song collection as everyone has songs encoded at different rates and songs of different lengths in different formats

You could have 1 song at 160gigs and that would be all you could fit or 1,000,000 songs that are 160gigs in total and that too could fit. It is ONLY about the data size of your collection

Please do not respond to this thread with snarky remarks that bring nothing to this discussion.

You just responded to this thread with a snarky remark that brought nothing to this discussion. So did I, the difference is that you asked people not to do this, so doing it yourself can only be called hypocritical, while I have no obligation whatsoever to obey your commands. And I'll bring to the discussion that AppleDApp's response was 100 percent spot on.

I am new to this forum and do not have any real programming skills in Mac or Microsoft. That said, I am pretty good at building Excel spreadsheets.

My field is Accounting and Law.

I had a feeling there would be stumbling blocks trying to communicate with the IT community.

I concede my original question was irrelevant though I did not understand why at the time.

I also did not know until I figured it out this afternoon that data point column headers can be added to the iTunes library.

My iTunes library now includes Kind and Size columns so I can sort my songs in Excel by file size and kind, which I just did.

The next snag I ran into was sorting the sizes by KB and MB which I could not do in Excel though I'm sure there is a way. So I had to manually move the KB sizes to a new column using the Find feature. My worksheet now has a column for sizes measured in MB and KB.

Here are the totals I came up with:

157,322.50 MB and 98,121 KB

I Googled how to convert these sizes to GB(s) and came up with a grand total of (drum roll) 153.73 GB (that's a lot of songs)

I don't know what the iPod Classic's file storage overhead is for basic programs

I had a feeling there would be stumbling blocks trying to communicate with the IT community.

That was not the problem with your responses -- it had nothing to do with the audience. It was your willingness to jump down the throats of the people attempting to help you. Though it is difficult to convey emotion through a message board such as this, I sincerely hope you're not this way in real life with your IT people, or others attempting to assist you.

__________________Voted "Most likely to start his own cult" by my high school class.

If you select the iPod in the device's tab and go to the Music page, it gives you the option to Sync Entire Library or Sync Selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres.

Choose the second option and it will give you some menus to (de)select any specific playlists or albums and such. It will update the capacity bar at the lower edge of the screen accordingly so if you exceed the capacity of the device, you can just deselect an albums or artists as needed.

From what you've described, it sounds like the Sync Entire Library option is chosen and within the main iTunes music index, you're deselecting songs while using your spreadsheet as a guide in order to get to the desired capacity. Did I understand your method right?

I think the method I outlined above would work much better for you unless you're already doing it that way and I've misunderstood you.

1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less. Music capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128-Kbps AAC encoding; in 256-Kbps AAC format, song capacity is up to 20,000 songs. Video capacity based on H.264 1.5-Mbps video at 640-by-480 resolution combined with 128-Kbps audio. Actual capacity varies by content.

A simpler method might be to put the songs you like and listen to most, leaving off the couple thousand you like the least, or don't need to listen to when you're not at your computer.. If your just using the ipod as a method of storage, ie backing up your music, you might consider an external drive that has less function but more storage.

A simpler method might be to put the songs you like and listen to most, leaving off the couple thousand you like the least, or don't need to listen to when you're not at your computer.. If your just using the ipod as a method of storage, ie backing up your music, you might consider an external drive that has less function but more storage.

My personal music library is a thirty plus year labor of love covering everything from Louis Armstrong to Lou Reed. Blues, R&B, Classic Rock, Jazz, Blue Grass, Reggae and Classical are a few of the genres included in my collection. I set the iPod to shuffle and enjoy unlimited juxtaposition while commuting in my car or hiking.

I have an external hard drive for back up so this has nothing to do with file storage. I rarely if ever listen to music on the iMac.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleDApp

This is why I don't like helping new users. I'm out of here.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by mdehoogh

If you select the iPod in the device's tab and go to the Music page, it gives you the option to Sync Entire Library or Sync Selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres.

Choose the second option and it will give you some menus to (de)select any specific playlists or albums and such. It will update the capacity bar at the lower edge of the screen accordingly so if you exceed the capacity of the device, you can just deselect an albums or artists as needed.

From what you've described, it sounds like the Sync Entire Library option is chosen and within the main iTunes music index, you're deselecting songs while using your spreadsheet as a guide in order to get to the desired capacity. Did I understand your method right?

I think the method I outlined above would work much better for you unless you're already doing it that way and I've misunderstood you.

Yes, I think you understand my method.

Thanks for the iTunes tip. I'll try that out next.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by aarond12

That was not the problem with your responses -- it had nothing to do with the audience. It was your willingness to jump down the throats of the people attempting to help you. Though it is difficult to convey emotion through a message board such as this, I sincerely hope you're not this way in real life with your IT people, or others attempting to assist you.

This post quoted above was directed at the first reply to my first ever post in this forum which reads,

"This is irrelevant it depends on the size of each file. In iTunes you'll be able to find the size of your library."

(...in other words, your question is irrelevant, here is all you need to know)

I found this post to be unhelpful and dismissive (must have reminded me of a bad teacher) which is why I now regretfully posted the snarky remark comment.

I was subsequently called a dick, scolded at like a child and labelled as a no nothing new user among other shining denunciations.

That said, most of the people here were helpful and civil. My iPod storage capacity management question was more or less resolved. Thanks again for the help.

The rest of you can pound sand.

The bolded is not was implied in his post....

The irrelevancy is that concerning minutes as the amt of minutes is irrelevant for the ipod. It can hold 1 gazillion minutes if the files sizes were less than 160GB or 1 sec if the file size was 160gb. In other words, the only relevant measure of capacity is the size of the files, not the length

Not sure why you interpreted his statement to what I have bolded above